Exploring the efficiency of the Tilburg Frailty Indicator: a review

Abstract

Due to rapidly aging human populations, frailty has become an essential concept, as it identifies older people who have higher risk of adverse outcomes, such as disability, institutionalization, lower quality of life, and premature death. The Tilburg Frailty Indicator (TFI) is a user-friendly questionnaire based on a multidimensional approach to frailty, assessing physical, psychologic, and social aspects of human functioning. This review aims to explore the efficiency of the TFI in assessing frailty as a means to carry out research into the antecedents and consequences of frailty, and its use both in daily practice and for future intervention studies. Using a multidimensional approach to frailty, in contexts where health care professionals or researchers may have no time to interview or examine the client, we recommend employing the TFI because there is robust evidence of its reliability and validity and it is easy and quick to administer. More studies are needed to establish whether the TFI is suitable for intervention studies not only in the community, but also for specific groups such as patients in the hospital or admitted to an emergency department. We conclude that it is important to not only determine the deficits that frail older people may have, but also to assess their balancing strengths and resources. In order to be able to meet the individual needs of frail older persons, traditional and often fragmented elderly care should be developed toward a more proactive elderly care, in which frail older persons and their informal network are in charge.

Frailty is a useful predictive marker of postoperative complications after pancreaticoduodenectomy

“…In previous reports 21,22 revealing a relationship between pancreatectomy and CR-POPF, surgeons had judged the pancreas as soft or hard subjectively. Third, the de nition of frail varies 16,20,32,33 ; thus, our result may be remarkably different than those of previous studies using other de nitions. In our report, we adopted the J-CHS criteria, which was a simple frailty assessment tool, and included similar items to the criteria of sarcopenia.…”

Frailty assessment in older adults with chronic obstructive respiratory diseases

“…The TFI refers to the following three categories of frailty: physical frailty (health, unexplained weight loss, difficulty in walking, balance, poor hearing, vision, lack of strength in the hands, and tiredness), psychological frailty (problems with memory, feeling down, anxiety, and inability to cope with problems), and social frailty (living alone, lack of social relations, and social support). A score >5 is the best cutoff point indicative of frailty 104,105…”

Chapter 1 Frailty: Definition, diagnosis, epidemiology

“…7 According to Morley et al, this model represents a popular approach to defining physical frailty. 14 Aside from the above, there are also a number of comprehensive geriatric assessments, the relatively popular of which are the Edmonton Frail Scale (Table 2), 3,15 Tilburg Frailty Indicator (Table 3) 16 and Kihon Checklist (Table 4). It also noted that there are numerous other criteria based on the same phenotype.…”

“…10 According to Searle et al, categorical, ordinal and interval variables can be coded so that 0 = absence of a deficit, and 1 = full expression of the deficit. 14 Aside from the above, there are also a number of comprehensive geriatric assessments, the relatively popular of which are the Edmonton Frail Scale (Table 2), 3,15 Tilburg Frailty Indicator (Table 3) 16 and Kihon Checklist ( Table 4). 17 There are also some screening tools, such as the FRAIL scale ( Table 5) 18 and five-item frailty screening index ( Table 6).…”